What If Words Had Guardian Angels

by Mario Milosevic

You'd hear them praying when you

pressed your ear to a printed page.

"Please keep me from the pain,"

you'd hear death say on its sighing

expelled breath, "of being deployed

in so many heart–breaking sentences."

Disease would likewise ask for absence

from so many bad news paragraphs.

"We can't take it anymore," says

cancer. "We can no longer summon

the strength we need to witness

the horrors we name," says war and

genocide, killer and body count.

Would they listen, these angels?

Would we suddenly see pages with

blank spaces where these agonized

words once dwelled? Would they get

words the help they needed from trained

professionals who could heal their

trauma? Or would the angels, invoking

the grim paradigm of the necessity of

facing even awful truths, simply bless

them with syllables of their own?

Offering their own sad words, would

they say: "You are strong. You will live.

You will see better days filled with love."